Education

Ways to Connect

Some CMS schools perform extremely well, while others struggle. The same is true with charter schools throughout the Charlotte area. But compared with CMS, charters received a lower rate of As and a higher rate of Fs on this year's school performance grades.

CMS schools open in less than two weeks and school officials are still trying to fill teacher and bus driving positions. One hundred and fourteen is the number of teacher positions that need to be filled, says CMS Superintendent Ann Clark.

CMS's new rules on how teachers should handle transgender students has angered some community members. A group organized by the NC Values Coalition spoke at Tuesday night's school board meeting and protested before it.

CharlotteObserver.com Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has hit pause on new rules that would have given transgender students access to school bathrooms and locker rooms based on the gender they identify with, Superintendent Ann Clark said Thursday. The announcement coincides with a letter-writing campaign launched by the N.C. Values Coalition, which is urging parents to bombard CMS with letters saying the regulations that were announced in June would jeopardize students’ “privacy, safety and...

The CMS board is trying to break up concentrations of poverty in schools with a new student assignment plan. The board's first task is doing that in the district's magnet schools. The board met for four hours Tuesday to discuss proposals to present at a series of community meetings that start next week. Board members weighed a lot of options, but before they could even discuss them they had to get their heads around how to measure a student's socioeconomic status.

Mooresville Graded Schools has some big shoes to fill. Its superintendent Mark Edwards announced last week he'll be leaving the district in August for a job at Discovery Education. Edwards has led the district for the past nine years. During that time, Mooresville Graded Schools rose to be one of the top-performing districts in the state, even though it's near the bottom for funding and nearly 40 percent of kids are low-income. Edwards championed a push to digital which earned the district national attention.

Research suggests that students of color perform better academically and are disciplined less when they have teachers of color. But there aren’t a lot of teachers of color, especially African-American men. In CMS, just over 5 percent are black men and, nationally, it’s 2 percent. A Charlotte group called Profound Gentlemen is working to strengthen the support system for black male teachers, in hopes of increasing their numbers.

A controversial bill that would allow charter school operators to take over five low-performing public schools in the state was approved by the full house Thursday. It also now includes some provisions that school districts have been requesting.